Preservation of the Falls 



blanched survival and recovery of the stream. It stretches away 1871 

 like a tired swimmer, struggling from the snowy scum and the-J amcs 

 silver drift, and passing slowly from an eddying foam-sheet, 

 touched with green lights, to a cold, verd-antique, streaked and 

 marbled with trails and wild arabesques of foam. This is the 

 beginning of that air of recent distress which marks the river as 

 you meet it at the lake. It shifts along, tremendously conscious, 

 relieved, disengaged, knowing the worst is over, with its dignity 

 injured but its volume undiminished, the most stately, the least 

 turbid of torrents. Its movement, its sweep and stride, are as 

 admirable as its colour, but as little as its colour to be made a 

 matter of words. These things are but part of a spectacle in 

 which nothing is imperfect. As you draw nearer and nearer, on 

 the Canada cliff, to the right arm of the Horseshoe, the mass 

 begins in all conscience to be large enough. You are able at last 

 to stand on the very verge of the shelf from which the leap is 

 taken, bathing your boot-toes, if you like, in the side-ooze of the 

 glassy curve. I may say, in parenthesis, that the importunities 

 one suffers here, amid, the central din of the cataract, from hack- 

 men and photographers and vendors of gimcracks, the simply 

 hideous and infamous. The road is lined with little drinking- 

 shops and warehouses, and from these retreats their occupants 

 dart forth upon the hapless traveller with their competitive 

 attractions. You purchase release at last by the fury of your 

 indifference, and stand there gazing your fill at the most beautiful 

 object in the world. 



The perfect taste of it is the great characteristic. It is not in 

 the least monstrous ; it is thoroughly artistic and, as the phrase is, 

 thought out. In the matter of line it beats Michael Angelo. One 

 may seem at first to say the least, but the careful observer will 

 admit that one says the most, in saying that it pleases — pleases 

 even a spectator who was not ashamed to write the other day that 

 he didn't care for cataracts. There are, however, so many more 

 things to say about it — its multitudinous features crowd so upon 

 the vision as one looks — that it seems absurd to begin to analyse. 



1097 



